The starving writer diet

My dad managed to get scurvy in college, so while I'm still a cheapskate, I make sure I grab some produce-- Grocery stores usually have a discount area for day-old/getting too ripe to sell fruit&veggies, which are often still perfectly tasty.

I ate a whole can of peas once, because I didn't have any sort of storage container to keep the other portions in. I couldn't afford to dump them. Peas for dinner. It's alright. I like peas.

I eat better with less money. When I have spare cash I tend to get lazy. When I don't I create soups and stews starting with an onion and garlic base, which I spice up and bulk with lentils or barley etc. I've been on my own since the age of twelve so I have a lot of cooking experience.

kraft Dinner, hot dogs and of course those little packages of Mr. Noodles

Pasta with white sauce. Because the food bank gives you everything you need for it. (pasta, flour, marg, powdered milk)

I also once made a sauce for pasta with the liquid from a tin of olives because I was out of powdered milk.

Saskatoonistan said:

Chick peas that were in the cupboard for three years. Not much you can do with them, so I ate them out of the can. Ahhhh, blessed poverty.

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Yes, I've done this with chick peas! And various other canned products (although I chucked the chick peas as they were more than a year out of date).

I have rediscovered baked beans on toast...only thing is that even though they're cheap, here in France, Heinz baked beans are imported and whilst still cheap, more expensive than they should be.

Going way on back, after WWII, I swear my family had soup for dinner at least five nights a week and some of them were pretty plain - potatoes cut up and boiled in enough water to call it soup with just some salt for seasoning - no butter or milk or anything, rice the same way or with a little bit (and I mean little bit) of left over beef to add some flavour, split pea soup sometimes with a bit of ham bone for seasoning, bean soup and lima bean soup with a little ham bone or fat for seasoning, vegetable soup with whatever vegetables were left over from the past week cooked with a beef bone (and usually with a potato, an onion, and the leafy tops of celery added), onion soup cooked with a beef bone. They were all good and I think we were a lot healthier than we are these days. Puma

Puma said:

Going way on back, after WWII, I swear my family had soup for dinner at least five nights a week and some of them were pretty plain - potatoes cut up and boiled in enough water to call it soup with just some salt for seasoning - no butter or milk or anything, rice the same way or with a little bit (and I mean little bit) of left over beef to add some flavour, split pea soup sometimes with a bit of ham bone for seasoning, bean soup and lima bean soup with a little ham bone or fat for seasoning, vegetable soup with whatever vegetables were left over from the past week cooked with a beef bone (and usually with a potato, an onion, and the leafy tops of celery added), onion soup cooked with a beef bone. They were all good and I think we were a lot healthier than we are these days. Puma

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QFT.

I love soup. For richer or poorer, me and soup, we'll always be together.

...in tight times I eat healthy, making sure everything I eat is nutritious.
I mostly do so at all times, with the addition of occasional sweets

Saskatoonistan said:

Ichiban noodles? Kraft Dinner? (That's Kraft Mac & Cheese for you yanks.) Toasted heels of bread with generic peanut butter?

When you are/were dirt poor, what do/did you eat?

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Kraft dinners (That's Mac & Cheese for you canuks) and peanut butter on toast. <3

Ramen. Peanut butter on stuff (whatever's around). More Ramen. And most importantly, the mighty Sandwich Maker (TM) - which can make a nice hot meal from two slices of bread and anything you want to put in between them:

Bread + cheese = grilled cheese!
Bread + cheese + processed turkey slices = fancy grilled cheese!
Bread + cheese + tomato sauce = pizza!
Bread + peanut butter = messy, sticky, but kinda good!
Bread + canned chicken + cheddar cheese soup = portable chicken alfredo!
Bread + cherry pie filling (with a powdered sugar and milk glaze) = mountain pies!

I heart my Sandwich Maker (TM).

KD with cut up fried spam and canned tomatoes. also visiting mom's pantry works awesome if you're in the same city.

swvaughn said:

Ramen. Peanut butter on stuff (whatever's around). More Ramen. And most importantly, the mighty Sandwich Maker (TM) - which can make a nice hot meal from two slices of bread and anything you want to put in between them:

Bread + cheese = grilled cheese!
Bread + cheese + processed turkey slices = fancy grilled cheese!
Bread + cheese + tomato sauce = pizza!
Bread + peanut butter = messy, sticky, but kinda good!
Bread + canned chicken + cheddar cheese soup = portable chicken alfredo!
Bread + cherry pie filling (with a powdered sugar and milk glaze) = mountain pies!

I heart my Sandwich Maker (TM).

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My favourite has to be a mashed banana.

Also, if it's a sealed sandwich, healthy egg snack! Make sure the egg white is cooked through to avoid gross-out. Great with runny yolk...

Mac and cheese with hot dog slices. Sometimes, when I had extra money, it was mac and cheese with hamburger and sour cream mixed in.

Cream-style corn and crushed Chik'n In a Biskit crackers.

Mac and cheese with a can of cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup mixed in.

When I was in grad school, I worked part time at a zoo, so the lowest I have sunk is pilfering monkey biscuits and bruised bananas for breakfast. Once, they had ten pounds of raptor meat. (ground meat with additives for birds of prey to eat). It was one day over its expiry date, so under the zoo's policies we couldn't feed it to the birds. I took it home and had a BBQ with some other starving grad students. Yummy raptor meat burgers with odd little bits of bone and grain and ???

I created a dish about 8 years ago when me and my husband were living on about 800 a month and had a baby. We call it chicken and rice.

You cook up chicken, cut it into pieces, the poorer you are the less chicken you get. Rice, steamed. Frozen veggies, usually carrots, cauloflower, and broccoli mix but you can use whatever. Heat up the veggies, chop them into smaller pieces.

Combine all three, add either a can of cream soup (any flavor you like, fat free works good too if you're trying to watch your waist line) or add teriaki. It helps mix it up.

Another fairly cheap dish is you cook up either a pound of hamburger or sausage, drain it. Chop up some potatoes small little chunks, scramble some eggs, combine. My kids love it. We don't have a name for it, but I had it growing up.

Also if you're poor avoid a lot of pre-made stuff, making your own stuff does cut down on expense while raising the quality of what you're eating.

Frozen veggies are a great way to pack in those veggies into your meals without paying a lot for them.

Also smoothies can be fairly inexpensive.

I use juice, milk, and fresh/frozen fruit. A cup of fruit, 1/4 cup juice 1/4 cup milk make some amazing smoothies, make any combination you want, but use a strong juice. Avoid overripe bananas unless you're making a banana smoothie as they have a tendancy to take over, so be careful with how much you use. If it's too tart a little bit of sugar can be added. Also yogurt can be added as well, I use low-fat vanilla, it adds a great flavor and texture.

I make a lot of rice dishes with beans and whatever else I have to throw in there. I also eat a lot of frozen veggies and I manage to buy some form of soy protein. Used to eat ramen before a) I got so sick of it and b) I realized one package equals your daily value of sodium. Not good.

I'm already a poor college student working toward an art degree, so....yeah.

Some other cheapies from my childhood -

Hominy and sausage - fry the sausage so it's done, drain fat, and add a mostly drained can of hominy (large can or more for a pound of sausage) Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until hominy is thoroughly warmed.

Baked spaghetti and cheese (sharp preferably). Cook a pound of spaghetti, put it in layers in a large oven safe bowl with cheese sprinkled in between the layers. Stir one egg up so it's thoroughly mixed, add about a cup of milk and pour that on the spaghetti. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more milk to the spaghetti until it's close to covered. Bake covered at 400 for most of an hour. Uncover and finish out the hour - by that time the milk should be absorbed. (The egg helps hold everything together)

Escalloped potatoes and ham - alternate layers of thin sliced potatoes and ham in an oven safe dish. Salt and pepper the top then add milk until the potatoes are almost covered. Bake covered at 350-400 for one hour or until the milk is absorbed.

This is what we ate in between all the soups. Puma

Nothing wrong with pinto beans and cilantro on tortillas.

Healthy, too.

Chilaquiles. Some tortillas, one tomato (onion optional) and a tiny bit of oil. Beans if you can find them, cheese if you're rich. Voilà!

For times of prosperity, you can add chicken.


If you're seriously poor, a taco made out of tortilla, beans and any type of chilli/peppers. That gives you full nutritional value (seriously, you could live your whole life on that and still be healthy).

What do you mean when you were poor?

I honestly think I made a lot of changes in my life primarily so that I would never, ever need to eat instant ramen noodles again. And the thing is, I always sort of liked them -- but there comes a point where you just can't do it any more.